Ancient BYZANTINE EMPIRE Coin JUSTIN II and SOPHIA On Throne Large Follis

Description

BYZANTINE
EMPIRE
Ancient Coin
AE
Follis
Of
JUSTIN II
Flavius Iustianus Iunior
Byzantine Emperor 565-578AD
Obv:  DN IVSTINVS PP AVG
Justin II and Sophia seated on throne
holding cross on globe and scepter
Rev:  Large M  ANNO left
cross above, regional year
CON in ex
Constantinople Mint
30.00 mm
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The attribution label is printed on archival museum quality paper
An interesting large bronze coin of Justin II. Justin II and Sophia on obverse and large M on reverse. This coin comes with display case, stand and attribution label attached as pictured.
The attribution label is printed on archival museum quality paper.
A great way to display  ancient coins collection. You are welcome to ask any questions prior buying or bidding. We can ship it anywhere within continental U.S. for a flat rate of 6.90$. It includes shipping, delivery confirmation  and packaging material.
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Justin II
Flavius Iustinus Iunior Augustus was born in 520AD, his parents were Vigilantia sister of Justinian and Dulcissimus. At the age of 32 Justin was given the office of cura palatii by Justinian which meant master of the palace. He was noticed as an heir after his marriage to Sophia one of Theodora’s nieces and after his appointment to master of the palace. The validity of Justin’s appointment as Justinian’s successor is sketchy, only the sacred bed chamberlain was present at Justinian’s last breath and proclaimed that Justin the son of Vigilantia was to proceed to the throne of Byzantium. The Patriarch crowned him Emperor the same night that Justinian had died. By morning Byzantium had a new Emperor. A day after his coronation he crowned his wife Sophia as Augusta and then quickly paid the debts his uncle had created during the campaigns in the west and taxes were reduced. His popularity was already growing.
Early in his reign Justin cut off the subsidies that his uncle had paid to the Avars, and then became embroiled in barbarian politics. Justin would later regret his Avar policy after an army lead by Tiberius Count of the Excubitors was defeated and the city of Sirmium was captured. Matters in Italy were becoming worse after the Lombards in 568 with many other barbarian tribes decided to settle in Venetia and later in Liguria. By the end of the Justins reign the Lombards were rulers of nearly the entire peninsula. The situation in the east was faring no better, Justin’s overtures to the Turks led to a war with the Persians. After two disastrous campaigns Justin was resolved to pay an annual tribute this was after the Persians had overran the majority of Syria.
The Empire was now in crisis with the loss of the eastern frontier to the Persians, a break out of the bubonic plague in Constantinople and Emperor Justin’s increasing insanity. The Empress stepped forward in this time of despair and turned to the Count of the Excubitors Tiberius. He was appointed Caesar (though he jointly ruled) through Sophia’s good graces. Sophia hoped to exert her influence of Tiberius by marrying him but Tiberius refused her advances and eventually Sophia would have to accept defeat. Theological issues, as usual in Byzantium, were always present. The Chalcedonians and the Monophysites were growing hostile as the Monophysites now had priests and Bishops of their own. Sophia and Justin where Monophysites but both had become orthodox for the sake of the Empire and in turn persecuted the Monophysites.
Justin died at the age of 58 reigning for 13 years. Although the Empire was reduced from its former reaches under Justinian, he did leave the empire more financially secure allowing Tiberius who would later succeed him to rebuild the army which had been defeated at Daras. Stories are told that Justin’s favourite amusement in his final days was to be dragged around on a portable throne and how he used to bite his attendants. It is also said that he had eaten two of them.
BYZANTINE EMPIRE
The Byzantine Empire was a vast and powerful civilization with origins that can be traced to 330 A.D., when the Roman emperor Constantine I dedicated a “New Rome” on the site of the ancient Greek colony of Byzantium. Though the western half of the Roman Empire crumbled and fell in 476 A.D., the eastern half survived for 1,000 more years, spawning a rich tradition of art, literature and learning and serving as a military buffer between Europe and Asia. The Byzantine Empire finally fell in 1453, after an Ottoman army stormed Constantinople during the reign of Constantine XI.
Byzantium
The term “Byzantine” derives from Byzantium, an ancient Greek colony founded by a man named Byzas. Located on the European side of the Bosporus (the strait linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean), the site of Byzantium was ideally located to serve as a transit and trade point between Europe and Asia.
In 330 A.D., Roman Emperor Constantine I chose Byzantium as the site of a “New Rome” with an eponymous capital city, Constantinople. Five years earlier, at the Council of Nicaea, Constantine had established Christianity — once an obscure Jewish sect — as Rome’s official religion.
The citizens of Constantinople and the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire identified strongly as Romans and Christians, though many of them spoke Greek and not Latin.
Byzantine Empire Flourishes
The eastern half of the Roman Empire proved less vulnerable to external attack, thanks in part to its geographic location.
With Constantinople located on a strait, it was extremely difficult to breach the capital’s defenses; in addition, the eastern empire had a much smaller common frontier with Europe.
It also benefited greatly from a stronger administrative center and internal political stability, as well as great wealth compared with other states of the early medieval period. The eastern emperors were able to exert more control over the empire’s economic resources and more effectively muster sufficient manpower to combat invasion.
Eastern Roman Empire
As a result of these advantages, the Eastern Roman Empire, variously known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium, was able to survive for centuries after the fall of Rome.
Though Byzantium was ruled by Roman law and Roman political institutions, and its official language was Latin, Greek was also widely spoken, and students received education in Greek history, literature and culture.
In terms of religion, the Council of Chalcedon in 451 officially established the division of the Christian world into separate patriarchates, including Rome (where the patriarch would later call himself pope), Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem.
Even after the Islamic empire absorbed Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem in the seventh century, the Byzantine emperor would remain the spiritual leader of most eastern Christians.
Iconoclasm
During the eighth and early ninth centuries, Byzantine emperors (beginning with Leo III in 730) spearheaded a movement that denied the holiness of icons, or religious images, and prohibited their worship or veneration.
Known as Iconoclasm—literally “the smashing of images”—the movement waxed and waned under various rulers, but did not end definitively until 843, when a Church council under Emperor Michael III ruled in favor of the display of religious images.
Byzantine Art
During the late 10th and early 11th centuries, under the rule of the Macedonian dynasty founded by Michael III’s successor, Basil, the Byzantine Empire enjoyed a golden age.
Though it stretched over less territory, Byzantium had more control over trade, more wealth and more international prestige than under Justinian. The strong imperial government patronized Byzantine art, including now-cherished Byzantine mosaics.
Rulers also began restoring churches, palaces and other cultural institutions and promoting the study of ancient Greek history and literature.
Greek became the official language of the state, and a flourishing culture of monasticism was centered on Mount Athos in northeastern Greece. Monks administered many institutions (orphanages, schools, hospitals) in everyday life, and Byzantine missionaries won many converts to Christianity among the Slavic peoples of the central and eastern Balkans (including Bulgaria and Serbia) and Russia.
The Crusades
The end of the 11th century saw the beginning of the Crusades, the series of holy wars waged by European Christians against Muslims in the Near East from 1095 to 1291.
With the Seijuk Turks of central Asia bearing down on Constantinople, Emperor Alexius I turned to the West for help, resulting in the declaration of “holy war” by Pope Urban II at Clermont, France, that began the First Crusade.
As armies from France, Germany and Italy poured into Byzantium, Alexius tried to force their leaders to swear an oath of loyalty to him in order to guarantee that land regained from the Turks would be restored to his empire. After Western and Byzantine forces recaptured Nicaea in Asia Minor from the Turks, Alexius and his army retreated, drawing accusations of betrayal from the Crusaders.
During the subsequent Crusades, animosity continued to build between Byzantium and the West, culminating in the conquest and looting of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
The Latin regime established in Constantinople existed on shaky ground due to the open hostility of the city’s population and its lack of money. Many refugees from Constantinople fled to Nicaea, site of a Byzantine government-in-exile that would retake the capital and overthrow Latin rule in 1261.
Fall of Constantinople
During the rule of the Palaiologan emperors, beginning with Michael VIII in 1261, the economy of the once-mighty Byzantine state was crippled, and never regained its former stature.
In 1369, Emperor John V unsuccessfully sought financial help from the West to confront the growing Turkish threat, but he was arrested as an insolvent debtor in Venice. Four years later, he was forced–like the Serbian princes and the ruler of Bulgaria–to become a vassal of the mighty Turks.
As a vassal state, Byzantium paid tribute to the sultan and provided him with military support. Under John’s successors, the empire gained sporadic relief from Ottoman oppression, but the rise of Murad II as sultan in 1421 marked the end of the final respite.
Murad revoked all privileges given to the Byzantines and laid siege to Constantinople; his successor, Mehmed II, completed this process when he launched the final attack on the city. On May 29, 1453, after an Ottoman army stormed Constantinople, Mehmed triumphantly entered the Hagia Sophia, which would soon be converted to the city’s leading mosque.
The fall of Constantinople marked the end of a glorious era for the Byzantine Empire. Emperor Constantine XI died in battle that day, and the Byzantine Empire collapsed, ushering in the long reign of the Ottoman Empire.
Legacy of the Byzantine Empire
In the centuries leading up to the final Ottoman conquest in 1453, the culture of the Byzantine Empire–including literature, art, architecture, law and theology–flourished even as the empire itself faltered.
Byzantine culture would exert a great influence on the Western intellectual tradition, as scholars of the Italian Renaissance sought help from Byzantine scholars in translating Greek pagan and Christian writings. (This process would continue after 1453, when many of these scholars fled from Constantinople to Italy.)
Long after its end, Byzantine culture and civilization continued to exercise an influence on countries that practiced its Eastern Orthodox religion, including Russia, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece, among others.
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